Name: A Boiled Plum Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pound suet, cut into pieces; 1 pound currants; 1 pound raisins, stoned; 8 eggs, separated; ½ nutmeg, grated; 1 teaspoon ground ginger; 1 pound flour; 2 cups milk

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

A Boiled Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Beat the egg yolks and half the milk together.
Gradually stir in the flour.
Add the suet, nutmeg, ginger, currants, and raisins.
Mix in enough remaining milk to create a thick batter.
Boil the mixture for 5 hours.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,324 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,377 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).
Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,180 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, egg, nutmeg, ginger, flour, milk):

Figfits better
Lemonfits better
Vanillafits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, egg, nutmeg, ginger, flour, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.